Dave and Drew Hacker sit comfortably on the Independence Square as they try to remember the exact month and year Drew started dating his fiancée.
A siren pierces their conversation.
“There they go,” Dave says to himself. He hears the siren and listens for the engine and the horn.
They hear it. Dave locks eyes with his son Drew momentarily. The sound gets closer, but it eventually fades and then stops. Beethoven’s piano music plays quietly in the background of The Portrait Gallery on South Main Street, a sharp return to the moment Dave and Drew are in.
Dave is affected. “I’m not ready to run out the door,” he says, “but I don’t take it for granted.”
Several thoughts flood Drew’s mind each time he hears Independence Fire Department truck sirens: Who is on that day? Whatever they are going to, I hope they’re doing OK.
“And then the last thing I think is, ‘What am I missing?’” Drew says with a soft laugh. “What am I not getting to do that they’re getting to do?”
That’s the excitement for Drew, 25, who joined the Independence Fire Department on Dec. 22, 2009. As a little boy, he once played dress up in his father’s firefighter uniform and clung to a fire truck as he visited the station, keeping quiet his aspirations to one day also wear it as a man. Drew shared with his parents that he loves his childhood memories, most of which took shape within Independence fire stations.
His parents agree that his decision to follow his father’s footsteps is the highest form of approval of how Drew was raised, 30 years after a father began a similar journey into adulthood.
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Capt. Dave Hacker wants to do more.
Three years later, the death of well-known Independence resident Jack Galvin still bothers Dave. Galvin, owner and operator of Peddler’s Bicycle Shop near the Square, slipped on the ice and broke his neck and nose outside of his business on Jan. 15, 2007. He laid outside for about 40 minutes before a resident discovered him. Galvin died three weeks later at age 82.
Karen Hacker, Dave’s wife of nearly 28 years and Drew’s mother, says she knows the incident still haunts him.
“I mean, I’m a block and a half away. It still, to this day, bugs me that for some reason, I didn’t go around that corner or go by him when he was out there the rest of the night,” Dave says. “That stuff bugs me more than anything – things I could have done. I guess it’s second-guessing an accident.”
Some calls stick with him longer than others, Dave says. Normally, his job involves the worst day of another person’s life.
“I enjoy helping people, but I don’t enjoy the work,” Dave, 50, says. “Every time I show up to something, somebody is in trouble. It’s a crisis, usually. I don’t enjoy that part of it, but I do my job the best I can. I just try to look at the humanity of it. I’m just there to make those peoples’ lives better, and if I can do that, I go away happy.”
A firefighter was among Dave’s top handful of aspirations, but working as a veterinarian ranked highest as a child. Dave is quiet while he reflects on what derailed his dream.
“I couldn’t honestly tell you. I don’t think there was a tipping point there that made me change,” Dave says. “I think I just ... grew out of it. I couldn’t tell you.”
Dave worked just long enough on the Independence Police Department to know that the role wasn’t for him. He transferred to the Fire Department at age 20.
Karen, who married Dave when she was 19 and he was 22, says she relinquished most of her fear when Dave made the switch. She knew he would encounter brotherhood and an extended family in the Independence Fire Department.
“Basically, David grew up as a man on the fire department,” Karen says.
It defines him.
“It’s always gratifying,” Dave says, “and you can’t help being a fireman and have it define you as a person. If being a fireman doesn’t define you as a person, you probably don’t need to be a fireman.”
He used to get so excited while en route to calls that he made himself sick, hyperventilating and nearly undergoing a panic attack. “I was never an adrenaline junkie,” Dave admits.
Plenty of anecdotes exist throughout a three-decade career, including those off-duty cases.
One of Drew’s baseball coaches fell over on a baseball diamond, suffering a heart attack. Dave ran out to the baseball diamond. He needed no equipment except his breath, his hands and his knowledge as he performed CPR on the man, in the middle of a baseball game.
“You just don’t think about it. You just do it,” Dave says. “I never even thought about not doing it. It’s always on. You have the duty to act just because of your qualifications.”
The Hackers took a vacation to Cancun, Mexico, in the mid-1990s. Their itinerary included horseback riding on the beach. Dave stood beside his horse, helping his sons get dressed after playing on the beach. He saw two horses nipping at each other.
“This isn’t gonna be good,” Dave says he thought to himself. He’d grown up with horses and knew their behavior.
One horse raised up, and instead of its female rider falling over the side, she pulled straight back. The horse landed on her on all fours.
It kicked her several times in trying to get up.
Dave grabbed the reins as the horse ran past him, tugged them hard and made it stop. He tied it to a post.
He remembers hearing screams like something you’d see on TV.
Drew asked his father, “Dad, did you see that?”
Dave was gone, already responding just as he would if he were on duty back home.
The nearest medical facility was more than an hour away. Dave performed CPR on the woman who had suffered severe trauma and had crushed lungs and a lacerated kidney until an ambulance arrived 45 minutes later.
“She would have died,” he says.
The woman survived the incident. Dave never heard from her again.
He remained in his comfortable level, never pursing the paramedic field. “I felt like I would only know enough to be dangerous,” Dave says. “I let the other guys who are smarter than me go on up.”
Other stories are bit more lighthearted. Dave once responded to a car wreck call at 39th Street and Missouri 291. An older couple had rolled off an embankment on one of the cloverleaves. They sat on the guard rail.
The man appeared fine. Blood covered the woman’s clothes and mattered her hair, Dave says. He’d recently completed EMT school, and he wanted to handle the call correctly. Dave insisted the woman receive medical treatment as he took her vital signs.
The woman had held a Russian salad in her lap during the wreck. As the vehicle tossed down the hill, the salad dressing coated the woman.
Dave laughs. The story helps momentarily ease the worry from Dave’s face.
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Growing up, Drew saw his father as an inspiration. He wore his father’s work shirts around the house while Dave was on duty. In high school, Drew’s firefighter aspirations dwindled compared to years’ past as he looked ahead to college and its endless possibilities of academic study.
Dave and Drew Hacker are practically mirror images, just 25 years apart. Both men are strikingly handsome and physically built. Their eyes are bright and strong, yet comforting. Speckles of gray brush Dave’s full head of hair and his mustache; Drew’s hair is jet black.
His father wanted something else for Drew.
“Dad actually always wanted me to be something more,” Drew says.
“I actually never encouraged him to be a fireman,” Dave interjects softly.
He was smart enough to work as a doctor, a lawyer “or somebody you see driving the nice car,” Dave says. “Some kinda professional, you know.”
It’s hard, strenuous work, Dave says. You work crazy hours for your wife and family. Weekends don’t exist.
“A lot of marriages don’t make it,” says Dave, who will celebrate 28 years of marriage with Karen in April. “I didn’t want him to have to work hard. I wanted him to be able to do an 8-5, be there weekends with his family, and not have to go through what I did.
“And really, it didn’t matter to me as long as he just made good money and had a normal job.”
It’s very abnormal, Dave says of his work, from the 24-hour shifts to how it affects you everyday.
“I doubt a mathematician drops whatever he’s doing and solves a problem for somebody,” he says. “You never turn it off – doesn’t matter where you are.”
The brotherhood, Drew says, is what keeps you sane on the job. Independence Fire Department Chief Sandra Schiess calls it a family. Members know when the others brush their teeth and cook their favorite meals. In 24-hour shifts, they know when a partner is celebrating or is suffering – there’s no escaping it, Schiess says.
“I don’t believe it can happen any differently,” she says.
A 2003 Blue Springs High School graduate, Drew attended college without a specific end goal in mind, though he still clung to aspirations of becoming a firefighter.
“And never told me,” Dave says quietly.
He attended four years at Missouri State University before he “sprung it on Mom and Dad” what he really wanted for a career. Dave says he and Karen thought Drew was still attending college but he actually was working to earn his fire science degree at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Mo.
Drew never graduated from Missouri State University. He earned 115 credit hours in “literally eight different majors.”
“I couldn’t find anything that I could see myself doing for the rest of my life,” Drew says.
He always wanted to make his parents proud. Every time he brought up becoming a firefighter, Drew says his father would set the subject aside.
“He just kind of knew that I wanted something better for him, and I didn’t raise him by threatening him ever,” Dave says. “I just led by example. I probably just did too good of a job on that.”
As a junior in high school, Drew visited his father during his shift on Sept. 11, 2001. They watched the events of the day unfold on television at the fire station.
“This is why you don’t want to be a firefighter,” the father told his son.
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Dave met Karen McClain at church when he was 17. They married five years later and had two sons – Drew and Ryan, 20.
“She was happy I wasn’t a policeman,” Dave says of Karen’s sentiment toward his career in fire fighting. “That wasn’t something I had to give up; it was just something she realized she liked a lot better after I had done it.”
Dave coached soccer. His brother-in-law would help out on days when Dave couldn’t coach because of work. Drew and Ryan grew accustomed to their father’s shift schedule of 24 hours on the clock, 48 hours off the clock. Dave cooked most meals and helped with laundry and other household chores, Karen says, and dedicated his two straight days off of work to his children. The three men in her life always made her feel like a princess, Karen says.
Tears spill over Karen’s eyes. “David puts his family first. His career is very important to him, but David has always made sure his kids were taken care of and came first in line,” she says. “Granted, you do miss important events, but David has incredible love for his family.”
Parenting is synonymous with guilt, Schiess says. She says parents often remember all the times they were absent in their children’s lives, but children tend to recall just the opposite.
“I think when you have committed yourself to something you really believe in and tried to be a good role model to your children when they choose to walk in your footsteps, it’s the highest compliment,” Schiess says.
He is Karen’s hero, her rock, “but sometimes he can be that little pebble in my shoe,” Karen says, laughing. They’re both headstrong, independent people, she says, but she still sees him as her knight in shining armor, her rescuer.
Karen’s father, Richard McClain Sr., her best friend, died on Feb. 21 at his Independence home. When Karen and Dave arrived at her parents’ house, they knew it was close to the end of McClain’s life. Dave, Karen says, immediately went into firefighter mode, taking McClain’s pulse and telling his wife, “We need to make some decisions.”
“Even though he is very close to my father, he was able to still take charge when nobody else in the room could speak,” Karen says, tears streaming down her face. “He was able to be my rescuer and take charge of what was the next step in what we needed to do as my dad was passing.”
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Drew Hacker was the first person on scene to a medical call in which a man couldn’t breathe and had no pulse.
The man died. Drew was actually off duty.
He worked for a year-and-a-half as a resident intern at Logan-Rogersville Fire Protection District in Rogersville, Mo., where he received room and board and also worked 24-hour shifts.
Drew originally met his fiancee, Jennifer Klempin, on an ambulance a year earlier, as Drew completed EMT school. It was strictly a professional encounter that day.
Klempin also responded to the medical call. Drew remembered the paramedic because of her long, dark hair and her popping eyes. They shared a conversation after finishing the call.
Two weeks later, Drew and Klempin started dating. They will marry on May 15.
Still living in Springfield, Mo., Klempin works 12-hour shifts as a registered nurse and also can fill in as a paramedic when needed on an ambulance. She’ll move to Independence in several months to join Drew.
Regardless of Drew’s decision, Dave expresses pride and happiness for his son.
He is happy Drew is doing what he wants in life – that, Dave says, is more important than anything.
“I can’t get over the fact that he enjoyed his life enough when he was growing up to want to be a fireman,” Dave says. “As a parent, you always feel pretty guilty about not being there for certain things, and this is the best way he could’ve shown that he approved and accepted the way we raised him.”
Drew proudly removes a necklace tucked safely beneath his shirt. The pendant is a Maltese cross, a common symbol for fire departments, with “Love, Mom and Dad” inscribed on the back.
He received it as a gift after his fire academy graduation. Prior to that, the necklace was always worn around Dave’s neck.
“It is so difficult nowadays to overcome all the obstacles to reach a dream and to watch your kids reach dreams. It’s amazing to watch people succeed,” Schiess says. “I hope that Drew truly does follow in his father’s footsteps. I hope he stays dedicated and passionate his entire career, and I hope it’s a long and safe one.
“I think, ultimately, that will be the greatest gift he can give his father.”
